I need a man. A man who can say "No."
A man who rejects
Big Nanny government. A man who thinks being
president doesn't mean playing
Santa Claus.

A man who won't panic in the face of
economic pain. A man who won't succumb to media-driven
sob stories.

A man who can look voters, the media and
the Chicken Littles in Congress in the eye and say the
three words no one wants to hear in Washington: Suck.
It. Up.

The Michigan primary put economics at
the top of the political radar screen, and the Democrat
presidential candidates have been doling out spending
proposals, stimulus packages, housing market rescues and
other election-year goodie pledges like Pez candy
dispensers gone haywire. Which leading GOP candidate
represents fiscal accountability and limited government?
Who will take the side of responsible homeowners and
responsible borrowers livid at bipartisan bailout plans
for a minority of Americans who bought more house than
they should have and took out unwise
mortgages they knew they couldn't repay?

I don't want to hear Republicans
recycling the
Blame Predatory Lenders rhetoric of
Hillary Clinton,
John Edwards and
Jesse Jackson. Enough with the victim card.
Borrowers are not all saints. There's nothing
compassionate about taking money from prudent, frugal
families and using it to aid their reckless neighbors
and co-workers who moved into McMansions they couldn't
afford or went crazy tapping their home equity and now
find themselves underwater.

Economist Tyler Cowen points out the
problem of predatory borrowing — something you never
hear politicians spotlight. He notes, "As much as 70
percent of recent early payment defaults had fraudulent
misrepresentations on their original loan applications,"
according to research on more than three million loans
done by BasePoint Analytics. "Many of the frauds were
simple rather than ingenious. In some cases, borrowers
who were asked to state their incomes just lied,
sometimes reporting five times actual income; other
borrowers falsified income documents by using computers.
Too often, mortgage originators and middlemen looked the
other way rather than slowing down the process or
insisting on adequate documentation of income and
assets. As long as housing prices kept rising, it didn't
seem to matter."[NYTimes
Blog, January 13, 2008]

At last week's Fox News debate in New
Hampshire, the He-Men of the GOP field went all
mealy-mouthed when asked about the signs of recession.
Mitt Romney asserted our need to"stop the housing crisis." Does he mean the
government should insulate borrowers and lenders from
culpability? Continue to artificially prop up housing
prices? If so, why? If not, then what?

Last month, Mike Huckabee told an NPR
reporter unequivocally that it "is not the purpose of
government to prop people up from every poor decision
they make." [NPR
: Huckabee Talks Tough on Mortgage Bailout]
Amen, Rev. Huckabee. But at the New Hampshire debate, he
sheepishly avoided tough pronouncements and instead
voiced support for President Bush's Hillarycare-Lite
housing bailout approach since it "didn't involve tax
dollars." Yet.

Huckabee is comforting himself and his
followers with semantic self-delusion. The Bush
measures, including a subprime interest-rate freeze, a
proposed expansion of the freeze to cover prime-rate
borrowers, and a push to increase the availability of
so-called jumbo mortgages and lift the $417,000 loan
cap, are the camel's nose under the tent. Eventually,
responsible taxpayers will pay.

It is? This is conservative? This is the
alternative to Clintoncare? No, this is
Clintoncare.

Why can't Americans be expected to pay
for their own schooling and retraining?

Fred Thompson, supposedly the
conservative's conservative, asserted the need for a
fiscal stimulus: "I think that has to be considered
somewhere along the line if the economy calls for it."

McCain and Romney want expansion of the
Federal Housing Administration to allow borrowers to
refinance — on the backs of taxpayers. Rudy Giuliani
wants government aid for borrowers who were
"cheated." No word on what he would do to borrowers
who did the cheating.

As we head toward Super Tuesday, the
subprime mess and the economy will dominate — and the
Do Something Democrat candidates will turn their spigot
of overextended homeowner sob stories on full blast. Do
Republicans want a clear alternative to liberal-nomics?
Or will you settle for a lip-service conservative who
will reward fiscal recklessness with only slightly less
government intervention than the Dems?

Still looking for Mr. Right. Remember:
You'll have me at "Suck. It. Up."